feminist blogs

Meet Neil Horsley. He created one of the “Most Wanted” websites with the names and addresses of abortion providers, and also posted videos of women entering abortion clinics. Cool! He deserves to have a lot of good things happen to him in life. And today is Neil Horsely’s day, because charges his ongoing criminal case — which involved him picketing Elton John’s house with a sign saying “Elton John Must Die” — were dropped. Congrats, Neil Horsley. I’m glad things are going so well for you. You seem like a really neat human being. Definitely a safe and responsible guy. I am sad I don’t live in Atlanta so that I can have you as a neighbor.

In other news, a black kid with autism sits in the grass and six schools get locked down.

I know Jill’s posted on Sister McBride a few times now, but I want to share this with you as well. Catholics is Choice is asking people to send her their messages of support in this difficult time.

While her personal position on choice is not clear, we do know that Sr. McBride acted in a thoughtful and pastoral manner with regards to this patient as part of the ethics panel. We need to support Sr. McBride and honor her courage and commitment to staying true to her conscience and to providing the healthcare women need.

Please take a moment to write a letter of support to Sr. McBride. Send your letters to activists@catholicsforchoice.org. We will be compiling your letters and notes, and will send them on to Sr. McBride so that she knows she is not alone during this difficult time. We need her to hear from everyone, from all communities and all faith traditions, so please share this action with your friends, colleagues and family.

E-mail your notes to activists@catholicsforchoice.org.

Leave a message of support on our Facebook page wall.

Tweet a message to @Catholic4Choice.

Good Medical Care

Bad medical care.

On the heels of the nun who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for saving a woman’s life comes this post about how good Catholic medical care basically involves crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. At least when it comes to women.

But the position of the church is actually born from humility, from daring to believe that God knows what he is doing. The church is not blind; she sees with eyes that are not fixated on the corporeal. Her perceived narrowness of perspective is actually so broad, it reaches into mystery. Far from being unnatural, she remains supernatural. She dares to trust that God’s plans really are “of fullness, not of harm.”

Although details are scarce, we are told there was an “urgency” to this 11-week pregnancy, and that there was a “nearly certain” risk of death to the mother. “If there had been a way to save the pregnancy and still prevent the death of the mother, we would have done it,” the hospital told The Arizona Republic. “We are convinced there was not.”

The adverb is the bugaboo. A “nearly certain, risk” is where reason, faith and ethics collide. Man trusts what man knows (in this case science and human flesh) and because he likes that illusion of control, he ignores the qualifier and calls the risk “certain.” It is easier to move on a pure certainty than on a “near” one that muddles everything up.

Having subjected these difficult, seemingly no-win situations to serious and prayerful thought, the Catholic Church gleans that—in obedience to God—this is where trust, that most difficult thing, must enter into the picture. She teaches that as we are all loved into being (and precious in the sight of God) a mother’s life, and the life of her baby, are of equal value; therefore each circumstance—and all available treatments and possible outcomes— must be individually considered.

Where both mother and child will surely perish—as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy threatening to burst a fallopian tube, or a uterine cancer or hemorrhage necessitating the whole removal of the uterus—the death of the child is a secondary (and unintentional) result of the life-saving treatment. This “indirect” abortion is made distinct from a “direct” (and therefore illicit) abortion, by intention.

This description is kind of muddled, so let me clear it up: If you have to take out a woman’s entire uterus or remove her entire fallopian tube, and there’s a fetus or a fertilized egg in there, that’s ok. But if a woman has an ectopic pregnancy that threatens to burst her fallopian tube — a pregnancy that will never result in a baby — you cannot, under Catholic doctrine, simply terminate the pregnancy. You have to remove the whole fallopian tube, so that the death of the embryo is merely incidental. It is possible, in many ectopic pregnancies, to remove the embryo without removing the tube. It’s preferable, in most cases, because it helps to preserve the woman’s fertility and, you know, doesn’t remove her entire fallopian tube unnecessarily. Catholic doctrine requires doing harm to the woman’s body if she wants to not die. Similarly, if a woman has uterine cancer, you can remove the whole uterus with the fetus in it so that the death of the fetus is incidental, but a doctor could not, for example, remove the fetus in order to operate and preserve the woman’s uterus. Some have even interpreted Catholic doctrine to say that you can’t be treated for cancer if you’re pregnant and the treatment would harm the fetus. Even if that harm is incidental.

So what happens when it’s clear that the woman is going to die if she remains pregnant, and that the only way to save her life is to end the pregnancy? Well… since you can never be totally 100% sure that someone is going to die (God could save them!), you kinda just cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Putting it more simply: aborting the child results in one certain death—not a “near” event, but a sure-thing; what the world might call a “win-lose.” Allowing the child to live, and supporting the mother with all due diligence throughout the pregnancy may result in the death of one, (another “win-lose”) or both, (a “lose-lose”) but because of that qualifier, “nearly,” and because even the best doctors cannot wholly insure or predict any outcome, there is also the possibility that no one will die, that both mother and child will live. A “win-win.”

If the church errs, she errs on the side of life. If she regrets the necessity of a “win-lose” in the case of an indirect abortion, she rejects outright the irrevocable “win-lose” of a direct-abortion in order to dwell in the possibility of a win-win.”

The church doesn’t err on the side of life. She errs on the side of stupidity or at least willful ignorance. Can anyone ever know with 100% certainty what will happen in the future? No. But if I take a flying leap off of the Empire State Building, I can predict with a fairly high degree of certainty that I will die. I mean, who knows, maybe I’ll just get hurt really badly — stranger things have happened! But death is the predictable and almost-certain outcome. Which is why they have those nets surrounding the observation deck.

Kind of how if pregnancy is putting so much stress on your body that your heart has stopped working, you are probably going to die unless the stressor is removed. I mean, who knows, maybe all of a sudden your heart will start to function again because of magic — stranger things have happened! But death is the predictable and almost-certain outcome. Which is why doctors estimate the probability of death or bodily harm, and have medical procedures, including abortion, that can be performed. They’re life-saving safety nets.

Yes, there have been people who have been told “You are going to die if X doesn’t happen” who, even in the absence of X happening, still lived. But those stories are considered “miracles” exactly because they are incredibly rare. And you know, if individuals want to cross their fingers and pray instead of seeking treatment, that is totally their prerogative. No pregnant woman, told she will or may die if she continues the pregnancy, should be forced to have an abortion. But it’s totally unconscionable to project those theological rules onto any person who walks into a public hospital, just because that hospital is affiliated with the Catholic church. I want better medical care than “Well, let’s hope for the best!”

Trying circumstances such as these are an invitation to ponder all we do not know. We believe that God wants both mother and child to live, but accept the possibility of other plans and even other—to us shocking—ideas, such as this one: What if that was all the life the mother was meant to have?

That unthinkable question, asked in light of the promise of Jeremiah 29:11, is where, for Christians, the rubber may well meet the road. Can we accept and wholly trust that God “has a plan” for each of us, if only we do not impede his access into our lives? We are meant never to forestall God’s possibilities.

Ah yes, the mother was supposed to die, and by interfering we ruined God’s plan.

… so why do we have medical care at all?

Really. I’m not asking that disingenuously. If the idea is that God has a plan for all of us, and that we should not interfere with it, then why do we try to cure cancer? Why do we set broken limbs, or perform emergency surgery, or perform C-sections? Why do we allow blood transfusions? Why were pro-lifers, including Catholics, up in arms about Terri Schiavo being removed from life support? If medical care should come down to faith and trusting in God, then why do we try to maintain life when, in a natural state, the person would die?

The argument, I’m guessing, is that God also gave us reason and intellectual curiosity so that we could discover ways to heal ourselves and maintain our existence. Great. We also have the ability to recognize the probability of death and act accordingly; we have the ability to see that, in the case of the woman in Arizona, hard-line rules about life and death result in horrific conclusions, and when there is a way to preserve one life instead of allowing two lives to end, we should preserve the one.

So why is it only God’s “plan” when it involves a woman dying because of pregnancy?

Our society loves time-travel stories. We love to tease the notion that one change in the time-continuum can have drastic and far-reaching consequences, even for peripheral characters, and for generations. A quantum slip, and the whole world may be forever altered.

But we never wonder (and indeed, some will hate me for daring to do so, here): what happens, within that continuum, when a woman who perhaps, in God’s plan, was supposed to die, instead chooses to kill the baby and remain alive?

If we believe that God has indeed has loved us into being, and for a purpose, what happens when the purpose is thwarted? Suddenly everyone in the mother’s world, even those on the periphery, may see their lives tilted away from the original “plan” God had for them. Perhaps lessons that need learning go unlearned. Perhaps a gadget that needs inventing in order to feed millions in the third world must be invented later. Perhaps a child meant to grow up formed by the knowledge that her own mother loved her so much that she risked death for her is not born at all, and a love that needs manifesting and expressing, goes undiscovered, and unshared.

Or perhaps the fetus dies anyway and four children are orphaned. Which would have been the case if the woman in Arizona were denied an abortion.

A good friend of mine would not be here if her mother had not had an abortion before she was born. I know two beautiful little girls who would be here if their mother had not had an abortion before they were born. Does God have no plan for them? Were they not meant to exist?

I would not be here if not for WWII, including the Holocaust. The same is true of many children and grandchildren of post-war European immigrants. Was the Holocaust part of God’s plan? Were millions of people supposed to have died so that we could be born?

Those are the paths down which the “God’s plan” argument will take you. Perhaps it was God’s plan for the woman in Arizona to go to a hospital where a brave nun happened to be the Catholic representative on the ethics board that day — after all, there are a lot of other people who would have apparently made a very different call. Maybe God set that up so that this woman could live. Maybe she has some greater purpose in her life that she has not yet fulfilled. Maybe God didn’t want her dead quite yet.

I’m not God, so I don’t know. But it’s awfully funny how the calls to “follow God’s plan” only seem to come up when “God’s plan” happens to conform to our own opinions and desires. I’m sure that’s a coincidence.

One of the first comments on the linked-to post sums up the position pretty well:

Well said. I think it is time to introduce our fellow Catholics to St. Gianna Molla. She died rather than abort her baby. That is the example to follow.

Did the Catholics involved in this abortion forget that we believe in heaven as a reality not a “gee I hope it’s true” dream, and we that believe that heaven is far better than this earthly life? Did they forget that death is not to be feared but rather welcomed as the attainment of our life long goal? These situations really show a complete lack of faith in the basics never mind a willful disregard of intellectual intergrity is the “ethical” decision making process.

God have mercy on us now that Catholic hospitals will perform an abortion an defend it.

The example to follow is to die rather than terminate a pregnancy. Ok. If that’s your preference, by all means, go for it. But your view that heaven is awesome and death should be welcomed as the attainment of our life-long goal? Not my view! And not the view that I want my medical professionals adhering to. Why even have hospitals, if that’s the viewpoint? Why have emergency rooms? Why attempt to treat diseases? Why not just manage pain and let patients die according to God’s plan, because heaven is awesome and we should all get there as soon as God calls for us?

At least be consistent. Heal or don’t heal. Preserve life or go with God when He starts pulling you over to the other side.

But if you aren’t going to heal patients? If you are going to say that getting to heaven is the ultimate goal and so death should be welcomed? If you’re going to make pregnant women a special class who do not deserve to have their lives preserved, because maybe that’s part of God’s plan? Then you should not be in the business of providing medical care.

Again: If your individual religious belief is that God has a plan and you would rather die than have an abortion or receive a blood transfusion or be treated for cancer or whatever else, go for it. But don’t demand that the rest of us adhere. Don’t assume that your personal preferences and beliefs should be projected onto everyone else, and should influence the care that they receive.

We covered this story already, but I want to direct your attention to this NPR article, which has a more in-depth look at the circumstances surrounding the woman terminating her pregnancy and the excommunication of the nun. When the pregnant woman showed up at the hospital, she was too ill to even be moved to an operating room; she was literally on her death bed, and would have almost definitely died without the abortion:

Last November, a 27-year-old woman was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. She was 11 weeks pregnant with her fifth child, and she was gravely ill. According to a hospital document, she had “right heart failure,” and her doctors told her that if she continued with the pregnancy, her risk of mortality was “close to 100 percent.”

The patient, who was too ill to be moved to the operating room much less another hospital, agreed to an abortion. But there was a complication: She was at a Catholic hospital.

“They were in quite a dilemma,” says Lisa Sowle Cahill, who teaches Catholic theology at Boston College. “There was no good way out of it. The official church position would mandate that the correct solution would be to let both the mother and the child die. I think in the practical situation that would be a very hard choice to make.”

That’s some moral philosophy you’ve got there when the decision to let a fetus and a woman die or let the fetus die and keep the woman alive is “a very hard choice to make.”

But the hospital felt it could proceed because of an exception — called Directive 47 in the U.S. Catholic Church’s ethical guidelines for health care providers — that allows, in some circumstance, procedures that could kill the fetus to save the mother. Sister Margaret McBride, who was an administrator at the hospital as well as its liaison to the diocese, gave her approval.

Let’s pause for a moment here. Yes, most (all?) hospitals have ethics committees or boards that evaluate tough cases. But here you have a dying woman whose life can be saved by a completely legal and incredibly common medical procedure; if she does not get this procedure she will die. But because the hospital is religiously affiliated, there’s a nun on the ethics board who gets to exert her moral philosophy over this patient’s right to live?

Don’t get me wrong: Sister Margaret McBride made the right decision here, and she was brave in making it. It’s abhorrent, though, that questions like this even go before a religiously-motivated ethics board in the first place. What if it was Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, the man who declared Sister McBride excommunicated, who was sitting on that board? (There is no “what if.” The patient would be dead, the fetus would be dead, and four children would be orphaned).

The woman survived. When Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted heard about the abortion, he declared that McBride was automatically excommunicated — the most serious penalty the church can levy.

“She consented in the murder of an unborn child,” says the Rev. John Ehrich, the medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix. “There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can’t do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means.”

Except, well, sometimes the ends do justify the means. I understand that sometimes Morality Is Hard, but this should not be. And hey, if it’s the Catholic perspective that a mother must die along with the fetus if she’s in a situation like this, then fine — pregnant Catholic women who follow this line of belief (and I’m going to guess there aren’t too many when it comes down to it) are welcome to refuse treatment, including abortion, in dire circumstances. But there’s a real conflict if a hospital adheres to a religiously-based morality system that disallows legal treatments to prevent death or physical harm — especially where there is no option of moving the patient to another hospital. If there was a hospital run by a non-Christian religious group whose belief system held that touching a member of the opposite sex was forbidden, and a girl came in and died because it was an emergency and there were no female doctors readily available, people would throw fits. And rightly so! But almost kill a patient because saving her life requires an abortion? We end up talking about how it’s a “difficult situation,” and debating whether the nun should be excommunicated.

If your “pro-life” views require that both a mother and a fetus die when it’s perfectly possible to save the mother, perhaps you should re-consider your moral judgment skills.

Thanks to Doug for the link.

The American Life League now has an anti-choice app for the iPhone. I’m sort of confused about what it does, exactly, other than let you upload photos wearing a pro-life t-shirt. Awesome, you guys.

So why this app? Here is why:

“Primarily, we are concerned with getting people to think of the child as a person from the moment of his or her biological beginning,” Carroll said. “It is much harder to murder a person than it is to “remove a lump of tissues,” and it is only when we finally get the nation thinking in those terms that we will be able to restore the right to life of our preborn brothers and sisters. Just by wearing the t-shirt and being out there in public, you will help to accomplish that goal!”

If you take a picture of yourself wearing a pro-life t-shirt and going about your daily business — brushing your teeth, holding a baby, screaming at women in front of abortion clinics, you know, the usual — you get points through the ALL app. The person with the most points gets a free iPod Touch.

So here’s an idea, pro-choicers: Let’s celebrate pre-born babies, and send pictures to the American Life League demonstrating just how much we love the smallest creatures among us. Take a picture of your used tampon, next to the pro-life t-shirt you made yourself (we wouldn’t want to give money to companies that make pro-life t-shirts, after all). Bonus: If you are fertile and have penis-in-vagina sex, there’s a chance that your tampon could even contain a fertilized egg! After all, something like half of all fertilized eggs naturally don’t implant anyway. By the American Life League’s standards, that’s basically the equivalent of taking a picture of you holding a baby. Pro-life! Or, take a picture of yourself holding a used condom. Every sperm is sacred! Aren’t pre-babies adorable when there are thousands of them? Any pregnant ladies out there? Perhaps show ALL what a beautiful pregnant body looks like without its pro-life t-shirt. Or maybe demonstrate via photodiary how you got that way in the first place! Any ladies trying to get pregnant? Let ALL know what that’s all about! Anyone giving birth anytime soon? A minute-by-minute photo shoot — from the doctor or midwife’s vantage point, of course — could be pretty great.

Alternately, we could show the American Life League what preventing abortion actually looks like. Perhaps a photo of you taking your birth control pill (or inserting your diaphragm)! Or if you aren’t the hormonal birth control/diaphragm type, might I suggest pictures of you getting a vasectomy, or putting on a condom! Maybe a nice shot of you having sex with someone who cannot possibly get you pregnant (perhaps someone of the same sex)! Maybe just a nice masturbation photo! (Although I suppose a picture of you protesting outside of an abortion clinic could also fall into this category). Perhaps, on the tamer side, a picture of you talking to your kids about basic biology and safer sex. Or maybe you at a march for universal health care, or you donating to a campaign to mandate coverage of birth control pills. Maybe a photo of you working to secure comprehensive health care coverage for low-income women, or immigrants, or girls. Maybe a picture of you teaching a comprehensive sex ed class. Maybe a picture of you helping a friend out with childcare. Maybe a picture of you doing some feminist blogging. The abortion-preventing options are endless!

Thanks to Amanda for the heads up.

____________________________
In case it’s not clear, I am kidding about sending sexy-time photos to the American Life League. Don’t do that. Or if you do, because let’s be honest it’s kind of hilarious, don’t blame me for it please. But sending photos of what preventing abortion actually looks like (i.e., comprehensive sex ed, birth control access, etc)? Not a terrible idea. And props to the lady who sends in the first tampon pic.

Oh the irony.

This isn’t surprising, given the far-right’s habit of threatening and sometimes carrying out violence against those they disagree with; it is particularly predictable given the anti-choice movement’s reliance on violence and intimidation. This is what radicals in the anti-choice movement do — they threaten people, they scream outside of clinics, they yell “babykiller” on the House floor, and sometimes they set things on fire or shoot doctors or kill people. All of it, from the clinic harassment to the death threats directed towards these congressmen to the killings, is entirely disgusting and unjustifiable. There are obviously varying degrees of disgustingness involved, but it’s all reprehensible.

But I’m with David — will the anti-choice lawmakers who are receiving these threats put two and two together and realize that what they’re now experiencing is just a fraction of what women who terminate pregnancies and doctors who provide abortions face? That women who enter abortion clinics are faced with screaming throngs of people, with threats, and sometimes with violence? That their own congresspeople refer to them as “baby-killers”? That doctors who provide abortion services are stalked, harassed, and sometimes killed? That I’d be willing to bet if you got the bloggers from the five biggest feminist websites together, we’d outpace these guys in death threats by a mile?

It’s shameful that these congressmen are receiving death threats. It’s shameful that they’re also part of a movement that has long threatened women’s lives.

William Saletan takes on the “abortion is genocide” campaign, pointing out that guns are really killing a lot of African-Americans, but the “pro-life” movement doesn’t seem too concerned — in fact, they’re unapologetically pro-gun.

The numbers are provocative. But there’s something odd about the billboards. The child who appears beside the text is fully born. Abortion doesn’t kill such children. What kills them, all too often, is shooting. If you wanted to save living, breathing, fully born children from a tool of extermination that is literally targeting blacks, the first problem you would focus on is guns. They are killing the present, not just the future. But the sponsors of the “endangered species” ads don’t support gun control. They oppose it.

Two months ago, the Violence Policy Center issued an analysis of black homicide rates based on the latest FBI data. The national U.S. homicide rate is 5.3 per 100,000 people. Among whites, it’s 3.1 per 100,000. Among blacks, it’s 20.9 per 100,000. That’s four times the national rate and seven times the white rate. In 82 percent of black-victim homicides in which the fatal weapon can be identified, it’s a gun. And 73 percent of those gun deaths are inflicted by handguns.

The report calculates that in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, blacks were 13 percent of the U.S. population but suffered 49 percent of all deaths by homicide. And the problem has been getting worse: From 2002 to 2007, the number of young black males killed by guns increased by more than 50 percent.

Maybe that’s why blacks, unlike whites, strongly favor gun control. In a Pew poll taken last year, whites said by a plurality of 50 percent to 44 percent that it was more important to protect the right to own guns than to control gun ownership. But an overwhelming majority of blacks, 72 percent to 20 percent, said it was more important to control gun ownership.

Saletan highlights the hypocrisy of anti-choicers raising a stink about race, when gun fanatics have pretty solid Klan roots — or, as he so beautifully phrases it, “People who live in glass hoods shouldn’t throw stones.” Indeed.

Last month, Renee wrote about the “Black children are an endangered species” billboards. Now the New York Times has picked it up, in a story about how the anti-abortion movement is using race and accusations of genocide as a way to “court” supporters of color to a traditionally white, long-racist movement. The anti-choice strategy has been to hire a handful of women of color to travel around the country telling African-Americans that abortion is part of a decades-old conspiracy to kill off black people.

The tactic seems to be working, at least to a point. And it works in large part because there is a long history of trying to curtail the reproductive capacities of men and women of color. The term “black genocide conspiracy” might be met with a lot of eye-rolling from white people, but there is a legitimate back-story that enables such a theory to take hold and to grow, and there are legitimate concerns about population control and the targeting of families of color. Tuskegee. Puerto Rico. Mississippi appendectomies. Women’s bodies were used as vessels to increase the slave population, and enslaved women had no legal right to their own children. After slavery, the reproductive coercion flipped, and people of color in the United States (or people wanting or forced to come to the United States) faced anti-miscegenation laws, anti-immigrant policies, mandatory sterilization and the wide embrace of eugenics. Through the 20th century and into the 21st, the bodies and reproductive capacities of women of color were used as political warning signs — Reagan’s welfare queen, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” and on and on.

And it’s not all “history,” either. Louisiana, last year. Criminal courts today. Women are paid to be sterilized, or otherwise coerced out of reproducing if they’re the wrong color or the wrong socioeconomic class, or if they’re addicted, or if they’re disabled.

All women face attempted infringements on their reproductive rights. But women of color in the United States have faced those infringements in a very particular way, and that’s in part why the “abortion is genocide” argument resonates.

But of course, the curtailing of reproductive rights and options for women of color (and for all women) is another piece of a long history of not allowing women to make the best reproductive choices for themselves. As Pamela points out in a really great take-down of the abortion-is-genocide argument, women of color in the United States are sorely under-served when it comes to reproductive health care (and health care generally), and it’s literally killing them. From her article:

-Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer at a later stage and are more likely to die of cervical cancer.

-Black people make up 13 percent of the population in the United States yet account for more than 49 percent of AIDS cases. AIDS is the leading cause of death for Black women between the ages 25 to 34, and the second leading cause of death for Black men between the ages 35 to 44.

-Black and Hispanic women have the highest teen pregnancy rates.

-Forty percent of Black Americans report being uninsured at some point from 2007 through 2008.

-Black women continue to die from breast cancer at alarming rates and a recent study found that half of Black teenage women reported having had one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases.

The anti-choice solution is to shut down Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides healthcare to under-served and low-income communities, and to try to outlaw abortion and even birth control. Only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion-related; the vast majority of what the organization provides involves pre-natal care, STI screening, sexual health information, gynecological care, birth control prescriptions, even flu shots. When you shut down Planned Parenthood, you aren’t ending abortion — you’re cutting off access to some of the most in-need women and men. But the anti-choice logic is that no women (and especially no women of color) should be allowed to make their own choices when it comes to their reproductive lives. Oh and also that black women are perpetuating genocide by terminating pregnancies.

That logic doesn’t just apply to abortion. Anti-choicers are also trying to cut off access to contraception, so that women won’t even be able to avoid unintended pregnancy. Programs that pay low-income and drug-addicted women to be sterilized? Funded and run by anti-choice, “pro-family” Republicans. Some of the biggest voices in the anti-choice movement still go around saying that Chinese people eat babies, for Pete’s sake. “Pro-life” Republicans oppose health care reform that would help women and babies; they oppose funding organizations that provide reproductive health care; they regularly oppose funding for pre-natal and well-baby care, for day care, and for aid to families with dependent children. In a nutshell, “pro-life” organizations oppose the things that prevent abortion, and then oppose the things that would make it easier for women to choose to give birth, and then oppose things that improve the lives of mothers, families and children.

But they would like to outlaw abortion and legally compel you to carry pregnancies to term.

Miriam notes that no one needs that kind of condescending “help,” and that the divide-and-conquer strategy to curtail women’s rights is not going to work. Women of color have long worked for reproductive justice — whether that’s securing abortion rights or pushing back against environmentalist population control arguments or fighting against welfare reform. To suggest that abortion rights are genocidal and that women of color are either sitting idly back or killing their own children erases all the work that women have done to secure rights for themselves.

What women — all women — actually need is access to reproductive health care and education (and go read that link, it’s a phenomenal piece). The fact that women of color have significantly higher abortion rates than white women should give us pause; so should the fact that the United States has a much higher abortion rate than countries in Western Europe where the procedure is widely accessible. Abortion isn’t shameful, but it is something that most women would like to avoid. The crucial piece to a low abortion rate, world-wide, is access to contraception. It also doesn’t hurt to have universal health care and family-friendly policies that enable women to bear and raise children without facing poverty, job loss or total life upheaval.

There are long-standing systematic blockades in the way of women in the United States accessing a full range of reproductive rights. Women who fall outside of the white/heterosexual/cisgender/able-bodied/middle-or-upper-class identity face even taller barriers to access. Eliminating those barriers, though, takes work. It takes dedication to women’s health and women’s lives. And dedication to women’s lives? Is not something that anti-choice organizations do.

You know, if they were really pro-life, they would also criminalize masturbation and menstruation. Every sperm is sacred! Every egg is a potential baby!

Snark aside, I do think it’s interesting that anti-choicers will put significant effort into a bill like this and into, say, prosecuting women who use drugs while pregnant, but they do absolutely nothing about the fact that enormous numbers of fertilized eggs — unique, individual lives, they argue — naturally fail to implant and are flushed out of a woman’s body. When I bring this up with anti-choice people, they always point to the causation factor — abortion is bad because a woman takes steps to end a pregnancy. It’s the difference between murder and natural death. Prosecuting women who used drugs while pregnant and gave birth to stillborns is acceptable because the woman did something which may have ended the baby’s life (that’s scientifically debatable, but a detour from the actual point of this post, so I’ll leave it alone for now). The Utah miscarriage law is understandable because it targets women who intended to have miscarriages.

I understand that. We do hold people more culpable for things that they do on purpose; we also hold people accountable for a lot of things that they do negligently. My question, though, isn’t with the punishment aspect, but with the activism aspect. Let’s say that we take anti-choicers on their word that they really, truly believe that a fertilized egg is a unique, individual human being, and that the death of that egg is like the death of a person. If that’s the truth, then why no activism around trying to find a cure for the close to 50 percent of fertilized eggs that naturally don’t implant, and are flushed out of the woman’s body? Sure, it’s not intentional, but if there were some disease that killed 50 percent of all five-year-olds, I’m pretty sure we’d be doing something about it, no?

I realize this is all pretty far afield from the actual Utah legislation, but it’s illustrative, I think, insofar as it demonstrates that the concern here isn’t really about fetuses or life or any of that. It’s about punishing women.

Amelia, a 27-year-old Nicaraguan woman, has a ten-year-old daughter. She also has cancer and desperately needs treatment, but is being denied care because she’s pregnant. Abortion is entirely illegal in Nicaragua, even in a case like Amelia’s where she needs a therapeutic abortion to save her life. In Amelia’s case, it’s not just abortion that is being denied — it’s treatment for the cancer as well, since such treatment could harm the fetus. Amelia might die and her ten-year-old daughter may be left without her mother because of “pro-life” orthodoxy.

Women’s groups are asking for help. Please visit RH Reality Check to see the full list of contacts – and please, send emails and spread the word.